The lighter side of football...

Thoroughly bored as i was watching Switzerland Vs Italy, I decided to look around the world of blogs for something more entertaining - and guess in which country i found it...? Yep, you guessed it!

Cool discovery of the evening is the BBC's World Cup Blog - check out this story to see how loony the country will be for the next 4 weeks...

Am I sad i'll miss it? Probably. Will I enjoy laughing from afar? Definitely!

Random stuff that caught my attention...

Had a very nice day, the first i have done in this year's MC transition.
It felt very strange this morning waking up where i would be working, i got out of bed, showered, ate breakfast and started to work without moving more than 20m at a time!

I've spent a lot of time the past few days looking at stuff on the internet, here is my guide to some of the nicer, crazier or frankly ridiculous things to be found on the information super-highway...

• Thailand photos (thanks Bee!)
• The blog of the BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson (ok, you have to like politics and political satire A LOT to appreciate this, just to warn you...)
• The 'modern & inclusive' Conservative Party recently had to reassure it's grass-roots members that it would not force local constituencies to accept "mincing metrosexuals" as candidates for future elections. And this was the party that performed best in recent local council elections...
• Music "can reduce chronic pain" say US researchers
• According to a UK planning organisation, HeathrowAirport should be closed and moved to the other side of London! They refer to the current site as "a series of minor planning disasters that together make up one of the country's truly great planning catastrophes."
• The EU member states have agreed to a new deal that will reduce barriers to cross-border provision of services
• Political rebel & former British MP George Galloway has been quoted as saying in a magazine interview that it could be "morally justified" for a suicide bomber to assassinate Tony Blair
• Cherie Blair (wife of Tony) is surprised at the media making a fuss of the revelation tha the Labour Party spent £7,700 on her hairstyling in last year's election campaign

So, i hope that has given you a bit of an insight into the beautiful and mysterious country i will soon be moving to, and the ever-so-slightly wacky one i have left behind...

Good night, I'm off 'home' (i.e. into the next room)

Home, sweet home

So that's it.

After 7 hrs of packing, re-packing, lifting & then unpacking, the big move is completed. What was 'Chitgo's Castle' (aka Eigerstrasse 55) shall henceforth be known as 'Parky's Palace'. The keys to Seftigenstrasse 287 have been handed over.

I'm actually pretty exhausted right now - 11hrs on the overnight train from Amsterdam to Basel (with one guy in my cabin snoring like a pig), arriving in Bern at 8am, coming to the office to catch up on emails, then carrying all my furniture down 3 flights of stairs to the cellar.

Things were complicated by the fact that when i moved there in June last year, there was not space in the office cellar to put many of the things which belong to AIESEC (actually they belong to Nicole) and so they ended up in my attic... And of course there they stayed! Until today that is... So now they are hiding in the cellar in Wabern until i can get them here, then we will have even more furniture in this packed office. Still, at least all the WENA MCPs will have something to sit on when they come for their meeting in 3 weeks :o)

But it feels good rght now, chilling out as i write this, with France vs Cote d'Ivoire on the tv next to me (yes you heard right, there is now a tv in the office - World Cup here we come!), and with my giraffe slippers hugging my aching feet. Just had a really nice chat with Yavor on the balcony (i never lived somewhere with such a big balcony before!) And speaking of Yavor, i have to say a HUUUUUGE thank you, without his efforts today i would either still be moving now, i would be crushed at the bottom of the stairs underneath a wardrobe, or i would have had to burn all of my furniture! Cheers, my friend.

So, i look forward to entertaining you one day soon in my new pad (when i'm not working in it, that is...)

And another thing...

Just popped into my mind while replying to Laura, when i come across aspects of culture that challenge, what will i be comparing them to? Is my base culture British, Swiss, European? Now i know a few people who would be very upset at me for daring to suggest there might be a 'European culture' (my parents for example...)

Or am i just used to AIESEC culture...? No it can't be that, i have already experienced that over time organisational culture within the same organisation develops completely differently, even in 2 countries quite close geographically, because it is so dependent on wider cultural aspects of the country.

So then how do i introduce myself to people? Rob from UK (war-mongerer, colonialist?), Rob the Swiss (safe, boring, will accept money from anyone?), or Rob the European (very mean to 3rd World farmers?)

This is going to be FASCINATING, isn't it...? :o)

On second thoughts...

have just been thinking again through what i wrote last night when i was slightly drunk (last night i mean, not now - it's only lunchtime...)

I asked myself, would it really be so 'easy' to adjust back to any European city, having spent a year in Bangkok? How quickly does one's own culture begin to become 'foreign'?

I know that Caro, for example, found it quite tough getting back to Switzerland, even after 4 months travelling in Asia.

Laura, Cileia, Dhruvli, would be glad to hear your thoughts...

Rotterdam or anywhere...

... Liverpool or Rome, so the song says.

Actually the weather is a give-away that you are not in Rome. It rains enough to be Liverpool, but it doesn't have the nice old buildings down by the river (yes, you may be surprised to read that Liverpool does have some nice bits, and even i as a Manc can admit that...)

he problem is that with its windy, rainy climate and love of 70s concrete structures, it could actually pass for one of many concrete jungles in the UK – Coventry, Milton Keynes… SO while on one hand I think I could be quite comfortable here, on the other it seems rather too close to home. I was actually in some bars tonight down by the river (happy birthday Navarette) that remind me of the Waterfront area in Nottingham.

Today was another great source of learning for me. We were finding out how to recruit a generation of @XP members, and then how to get them working in different Projects Based on Xchange. Yet again my feeling that the organisation and an LC within it can be run so simply, but for whatever reason we make it more complicated. In Switzerland perhaps this is due to tradition, I don’t know, but I really see that our structure is not very efficient. Oh well, perhaps this new generation of great members who were just inducted and then came to the Teamee Seminar to get functional knowledge will deliver the successes we have waited so long for…

Then following a tasty Asian dinner (something with noodles, couldn’t be more precise than that) and being disappointed by the unfairness of dessert (a delicious looking fruit salad that unfortunately contained a hidden army of bananas…) we headed out into the City.

We were joined by Floore, who is MCVER in the Netherlands (hope I spelt your name right…) who commented: “Isn’t it cool to be out with people from Holland, Spain, India, the US & Australia? I guess that’s the power of AIESEC.”

This week that power has definitely grown in my eyes. If only more people realised that this power is actually quite simple…

100% Talent Week: Day 1

Where: AIESEC International Office, Rotterdam
What: 15 people, 5 days of intense learning, un-learning (see below), sharing, challenging, reflecting and looking forward
Why: Because we are the people chosen to help AIESEC bring more impact to more people in 06-07. And I am honoured to be a part of it

SO what did I do…?

In brief (because it is 1am, Brodie is sleeping, and I want to get to the office early tomorrow to do some work for Switzerland…):

• Walked around Rotterdam looking for somewhere to buy breakfast, finding
a bakery where the assistant spoke no English, and being saved by another customer
• Met the other people striving to start-up or re-engineer AIESEC in Spain,
Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Jordan, Lebanon & of course Thailand
• Discovered the importance of this initiative for AIESEC and for the world
• Ate a nice lunch, and realised that I am quite good at guessing items on the menu because many of the words are similar to German
• Listened to AIESEC identity being explained to me as if I was someone who had never heard it before. Very powerful
• Seen that AIESEC can be explained very simply
• Wondered why we often make it so difficult
• Begun to question how many opportunities we have missed this past year in Switzerland, because we did not always have the courage to challenge people enough…
• Played 5-a-side football, scored a goal, fought with a dog to get the ball back, cut my knee by repeatedly falling over, finished on the winning team :o)
• Ate a delicious North-African dinner, and heard Dey’s stories about his recent visits to the Middle East, where politicians are queuing up to support AIESEC
• Had a 45-minute discussion with my boyfriend about why I can’t work out what I want to do with my life

Wow! Was I really only awake for 17 hours…? I guess I have earned this sleep!
Good night x

P.s. Aida, Chris, Cileia & Stefan, I wish you a powerful and memorable week

So much cleaning, so little time...

Today we put our poor office back together after the battering it took during the pre-meeting for KICK-OFF (a National Conference consisting of 20 facis, all of whom worked here during 2 days and some of whom slept in various parts of it!)

Now it looks good again (ready for tomorrow's visit of Christine Weber from Zurich Financial, for the Annual Report workshop). There is just one part that is not finished yet - that is my desk and its banlieue

Having started that mammoth task this afternoon i realised the bigger problem coming up - over the next 7 weeks i have to move out of my flat, my office, and Switzerland. When is all the packing supposed to happen? More worryingly, when am i supposed to do any real work?!!!

Looking at the mountain of papers in front of me i could spend the next 6 weeks just filing (today i started 2 completely new files, it is very exciting! Oh God, this is really getting to me, isn't it...?)

Oh well i will survive somehow, coz i don't really have a choice! And the next few days will be a masterpiece of logistical coordination: tomorrow morning i need to go home (i am sleeping in the office, missed the last tram 10 mins ago...), do laundry, pack for the weekend (see later) and then come back to work. At 6pm i am taking a train to go the wedding dinner of Stefan's (boyf.) brother in Brig (pretty town in stunning landscape but irritatingly far from Bern). On Friday morning i will take a train at 7, still wearing my suit as i then have a company meeting in Zollikofen at 10. After that i will race back to Bern, collect my luggage, take the train to Geneva and (hopefully) fly back to the UK.

Oh shit! Now i have checked my mails again & discovered that the meeting is in OERLIKON at 9!!! This makes things a little complicated. Hmmm. And the SBB website is down! I love moments like this... Looks like i will be taking the train at 6:18 :o(

Oh that has killed my mood. Now i guess i should go back to tidying my desk... Good night!

I'M GOING TO THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!!

I GOT IT!!!

ON friday i got the call i had been waiting for - selected for Leverage Country Project Team Thailand! Can't begin to tell you how i am feeling right now: slightly drunk (thanks DC, CK & Laura for a fun night) excited, curious, impatient, terrified, confused...

I'm off to Rotterdam on 21st May for one week of preparation - after that i guess i should have a better idea what will be waiting for me and what i exactly have let myself in for...

Already told friends from home who have been really positive about it, and some of my @UK buddies have already told me some of the best places to visit. Can't wait to get started!

Get booking your flights everyone!!!